Cambria County District Attorney Jessica Aurandt says her office is taking a tougher approach to prosecuting crime in and around Johnstown following a recent spurt of violence, vowing to pursue cases “to the fullest” and limit plea deals.
Aurandt said the county is moving away from past practices of negotiating lenient outcomes. “The days of negotiating sweetheart deals and guilty pleas that maybe in the past we would have offered, those days are over,”
Aurandt said she plans to take more cases to trial when necessary. “I’m a trial attorney first and foremost. I will try every single one of these to ensure that the most serious crime we can prove is what stays. The community deserves that commitment and law enforcement certainly deserves that commitment,”
Johnstown Police Chief Mark Britton said his department is working closely with the district attorney’s office as part of the crackdown. “If you’re out there breaking the law, and you are caught. And when we do catch you, which we will, you’re going to get, like she just said, you’re going to get arrested and you’re going to get prosecuted through the district attorney’s office,” Britton said.
Aurandt and Britton also raised concerns about misinformation spreading on social media, particularly posts based on scanner traffic. Britton said there have been multiple occasions when police investigated reports of possible shootings or stabbings and found the reports were unfounded. He encouraged people to report anything they believe is concerning, but said not every scanner alert turns out to be a crime.
The comments came after multiple misreports of a stabbing incident in the city on Tuesday. Britton urged the public to avoid posting unverified information online. “Be vigilant, absolutely, but allow the Johnstown police to put on any other of these minutes of power that would have to deal with an incident like that. Give us time before you automatically start putting it out there on social media and causing a panic for everyone,”
Aurandt said misinformation can also interfere with investigations. “What we don’t want to see is mass hysteria that is created by misinformation being shared on various social
media platforms or scanner pages and things like that. That in turn can hinder some of the criminal investigations that we have going on because there’s such an abundance of
information, a lot of it misinformation,”
They also warned that misinformation and negative comments online can discourage witnesses from coming forward. Aurandt said she wants to see a change in how people treat each other, both in public and online. “And so if there’s something that I could ask of the community, it’s just to start treating one another with decency and respect and with humanity. And we’re seeing a complete destruction of that in the street, but we’re also seeing a complete destruction of that on social media. And it makes it even more difficult to do the job of law enforcement when that’s the case,”
Britton and Aurandt said the best way to get accurate information is directly from their offices. They also reminded anyone with information about recent incidents to call the
Johnstown Police Department’s non emergency line or leave an anonymous tip through the Crime Watch app. Britton also thanked those supporting law enforcement efforts.